26
26
Flash.
Lightning struck. A blinding flash momentarily lit up the forest, where even moonlight couldn't penetrate.
In that instant, the man's smooth forehead, stubborn eyebrows, and cool eyes were revealed.
Before him, a massive centipede Magical Creature writhed, its head severed.
Rumble.
Only then did Lennox Carlisle lift his head, as if suddenly snapping out of it.
However, he wasn't surprised to find himself standing in the middle of a forest of Magical Creatures.
Lennox was thinking about a certain woman who hated thunderstorms.
"When will you be back?"
Juliet's fear of thunder and lightning wasn't something easily noticed.
First of all, Juliet Monad was audacious to the point of being fearless.
And heavy rain accompanied by thunder and lightning was rare in the North.
The season with the most typhoons was usually summer, and around that time, they would be staying at the summer palace.
But that was only his memory, and Juliet's memory would be slightly different.
The Dukedom of the North wasn't given for free, and he often left Juliet alone.
"A typhoon is coming soon. So..."
If she had told him not to go, asked him to take her with him, or begged him to come back early, he might have noticed sooner.
"Be careful..."
It was all she could manage to say after much difficulty.
'Foolish...'
Juliet was frustratingly stubborn in that regard.
She was a woman who could overturn the conservative and even spiteful high nobles of the North without a change in expression. So, she couldn't possibly be afraid of ghosts.
She probably just didn't want to be caught being afraid of being alone on a night with thunder, like a child.
Lennox had only realized this very recently.
On days with severe thunder, Juliet would leave all the lights on all night and huddle alone.
"It must be hard to fall asleep like that."
She flinched at his casually tossed words and reluctantly turned off the lights. It was closer to a trauma than just being scared.
Only then did he remember that a massive storm, one of the worst in memory, had raged on the day her parents died.
She never showed it, but on thunderous nights, she would turn pale and desperately burrow into the blankets, pretending not to be afraid, which was quite endearing.
So, he also pretended not to notice.
He had wondered alone what Juliet, who couldn't sleep alone on days when he wasn't there, would do.
But he never asked.
He only guessed that she would either leave all the lights on in the room all night and wait for the storm to pass, or call the maids to stay up with her.
He didn't want to know more than that, nor did he need to.
Flash.
When lightning struck again, Lennox found a gaunt skeleton at his feet.
The forest floor was littered with skeletons that were clearly human.
These many human bones rolling around at his feet weren't all unlucky travelers who had taken the wrong path.
The contaminated forest didn't only affect the deformed Magical Creatures.
The miasma itself emitted toxicity.
Strangely, this toxin, harmless to animals, caused hallucinations in humans and had a strangely drug-like effect.
Very few people knew this fact, but the North had many mountains, and naturally, many such contaminated forests.
Dealing with hallucination-addicted territory residents while subjugating Magical Creatures in the northern territory was one of the duties of the Ducal royal guard.
Lennox wondered anew.
Neither the poison emitted by Magical Creatures nor the toxicity emitted by the contaminated forest had any effect on his body.
Was it the same for his mind?
He had entered and exited contaminated forests countless times, but Lennox had never once hallucinated.
In the damp fog, Lennox stared intently beyond the pitch-black forest.
Soon, a hazy figure like smoke emerged from among the dark trees where nothing should be visible.
It started with fluttering hair and the hem of a skirt, and soon the complete form of a woman, wandering alone in the dark forest as if uneasy, appeared.
The familiar silhouette of the woman appeared vividly before his eyes, but Lennox didn't even crack a smile.
He was a little dumbfounded. Was he able to see her if he just thought about wanting to see her?
Lennox wondered if he was really hallucinating, or if it was just his imagination.
Rumble.
The woman, glancing around with a terrified expression, suddenly turned to him.
Seeing the direction he was in, the woman's expression brightened as if by a lie.
The next moment, Lennox instinctively reached out his empty hand towards the woman running towards him.
"Jul..."
As if she would really run into his arms.
But the woman passed straight through Lennox like a ghost and ran behind him. Turning around, he saw the woman embracing someone whose face was not visible.
Rumble.
Thunder rumbled again in succession, but the woman, barefoot and on tiptoe, clinging to the faceless person, no longer looked frightened.
Rather, she looked the happiest in the world.
She was smiling brightly with a face she rarely showed him.
She was smiling coyly at a secret lover as if she had been waiting for them, wrapping her arms around their neck and begging for a kiss.
Then, leaning her cheek against the faceless man's chest, she whispered, a little sadly but tenderly and secretly.
"I'm pregnant."
Her neat lips, which had always been obedient to him, seemed to be moving.
"So let's run away, you and I."
Clang!
Something collided with the blind sword strike he lashed out in a fit of anger.
The moment he guessed what it was from the sight of small sparks flying, Lennox was drawing his bow.
Thud.
With a dull sound, the body of the Magical Creature collapsed with the arrow that had been shot.
It was a bronze deer. A low-level Magical Creature commonly found in the forest.
The only difference was that its entire body was white. This level of mutation wasn't surprising in a contaminated forest.
It probably had been hiding somewhere after seeing the centipede that had occupied the center of the forest die and then jumped out.
Lennox looked down at the fallen Magical Creature with cold eyes. A stream of red blood gushed from the white deer's neck.
The illusion of the woman that had been flickering before his eyes had long disappeared.
"This isn't your child."
But unlike the hallucination that only moved its lips silently, Juliet, smiling brightly, was clearly saying that to him.
Normally, he would have doubted the truth of those words first. It was rare for him to lose his composure.
But his tilted reason was eating away at his judgment.
He couldn't quite find the timing to cut her off. Even so, he had no doubt that he would be the one to let go first.
But.
'So, she actually had ulterior motives.'
Lennox's lips twisted cruelly.
He could have caught her if he had reached out. That butterfly or whatever. Juliet's Illusion magic didn't work on him.
He had only been shaken by the tears that Juliet, who had never cried in front of him, had shown.
Clink.
The necklace collided in his grasp, making a sound.
This extravagant necklace, called the Tears of the Sun, was a luxurious item worth the value of ten mansions.
Yet Juliet had taken nothing. As if anything related to him, no matter how valuable, was terrible.
The white deer, its neck pierced, writhed and then stretched out, dead.
'What should I do with you?'
Lennox thought with a cooled head.
But he still didn't realize that he was wanting something from Juliet that he had never given her.
"My Lord..."
Hardin, who had been waiting outside the black forest with the horses, was startled when he saw the Duke slowly walking out of the forest.
Hardin, who had dark skin, was from a southern ethnic minority and was the head of the elite royal guard who were only loyal to the Duke.
He was a loyal subordinate who would carry out anything his master ordered without batting an eye, but even to Hardin, the Duke's appearance, covered in the blood of Magical Creatures, felt eerie.
Not only had he walked out unscathed from a colony of mutant Magical Creatures, but the Duke had also dragged out a bloody white deer.
"M-My Lord."
Trying not to look at the dead deer, Hardin opened his mouth a little awkwardly.
Originally, it wasn't Hardin's job to deliver such news.
It was the job of his secretary, Elliot, or even other royal guards. But he was the only one by the Duke's side right now.
"...A little while ago, we received a call from the Imperial Palace. The lake has turned red, they say."
In the capital, near the Imperial Palace, there was a sacred lake with restricted access.
The seemingly ordinary small lake was considered sacred because it foretold disaster.
Every few decades, or even hundreds of years, when the lake turned red, it was a sign that some ominous disaster would strike.
For an ominous Omen to appear the day after the grand New Year's banquet, it was only natural that the Emperor was horrified and urgently contacted Duke Carlisle in the middle of the night.
"My Lord?"
But Lennox Carlisle, who had thrown down his prey and was wiping his hands, didn't seem to care at all about Omens or disasters.
After casually wiping away the blood flowing down his chin, the Duke asked nonchalantly.
"Which way is Monad County?"
